Allrighty! I didn’t plan to join LD this time but what the heck – I’m in! Mostly because when I saw the final theme I got an idea almost immediately that shouldn’t take too long to implement. The player is stuck in a building and needs to *drum roll* escape! Very original, I know, but I have a few twists up my sleeve. 😉

So far the first room and the player is up and running as intended. Now to add some interaction with the game objects and then graphics.

This was my second LD and I’ve partaken in numerous Allegro Speedhacks before so I was quite used to the format and knew what I was getting into. I also had the fortune to have a completely empty schedule for the entire dare, so I could go into it 100%.

I choose to go with AS3, because that what I program in daily but I hadn’t used Flixel before. In retrospect it absolutely speeded up my development but I don’t think I will use it again as it didn’t really match my coding style. All in all I’m pretty happy with the outcome even if it came out a bit too difficult.

What went wrong
– scope
The original idea had way too many features that of course didn’t make it in the end. I had planned everything from magic weapons to hordes of different enemies but in the end only melee and ranged weapons. In addition to this every little fighter is simulated with too much detail. They have damage levels, different weapon skills, and other preferences that the player never sees. This could all have been removed with out affecting the game, saving a lot of time.

– balancing
When the game eventually was playable I realized that it would be a nightmare to balance. All the little things that controlled the fighters, merchants and soldiers made the inner workings way too complex. Changing on variable had unforeseeable results which in the end kept me from even trying.

– scheduling
I sat working way too many hours without taking any breaks. Not good. This made me very tired and I had difficulties tying everything together in the end.

What went right
– idea
The idea of running a shop came almost right away and I was quite fond of it. I hoped that the supply idea and the whole balancing act as a weapons supplier would work good enough to build around. It did work out fairly well I think and I think the choices presented to the player are interesting enough with room for improvement.

– graphics
I aimed pretty low for the graphics and just wanted to have something that was recognizable. I used breaks in coding to spend time on improving the graphics and I think it works well for what it is.

– difficulty
Even if the game is set at ‘developer difficulty’ and it wasn’t really intended, I must say I quite like it that way. It is relentlessly difficult, but still fair enough to the player and it always feels doable to win. At least next time you play.

…
That’s it! As I’m currently reviewing and rating all the entries I’m amazed by the rich and creative spectra. Good work all!

Even though the last few hours haven’t been effective, it has been a good day all over. I am quite confident that I will finish in time. I’ve cut out half of the content I wanted in the game but there is still quite an amount of graphics to draw, but I think I can get away with recoloring sprites. No new screen shot as the game looks just like the did in the last shot.

Finally got basic interaction in so now the player can craft using resources bought and create items to sell to heroes that try to overcome the threat of the evil empire! I hope to have heroes level up and come back and buy more stuff if they survive.

Basic crafting and automous fighting is in!

I’m quite happy with the progress so far, although I fear there will be a huge balancing act in the end.

Take the role of a shop keeper and supply adventurers with items. Craft items from resources. Get resources from returning adventurers or buy them from traveling salesmen. Adventurers try to defeat an evil empire and you can see the progress as they move towards their goal. If they survive a fight they come back to purchase more things and hand over any goodies found. Repeat until one side wins!

All preparations complete, schedule cleared for the next 50 hours, ready to go. Toolbox consists of Flex Builder 3 and ProMotion 4.7. Hope to learn flixel as I have been looking at it quite some time now. If time allows I assume I will throw together some sound to using sfxr like everybody else.

Obligatory screens showing LD website and irc...

Haven’t done an LD since #4 so I’m extremely excited about this one. Good luck to all!

I’m really not in control of the design process here. I’m making up restriction as I go along, constantly changing directions. The good thing is however that as I add restrictions, the amount of possible out comes drastically shrink. Currently the game is about being a cell and trying to eat other cells to grow, while looking out for “bad” cells, that will eat our shrink you.

All seen from the perspective of a microscope. It does it look kind of interesting, but it is far from fun yet.

I wasn’t going to start until tomorrow but I had nothing to do so I decided to implement a small tech test to see if what I wanted to do was at all doable in Flash. Space is filled with planetary bodies, starts and what not and it’s up to the player to feed the suns and make them grow to encompass each other (or something). Anyway, it’s all implemented with bloobs using flash’s bitmap routines. It looks a little something like this: